Portal: Lament
by iammemyself
Summary: What old secrets and lost lessons does Old Aperture hold?


Lament

Indiana

**Characters: potatOS, Chell **

**Setting: Post-Portal 2 (1930s Aperture Science Innovators)**

It is empty and abandoned. There is a pipe that's been dripping steadily, constantly for the last hundred years, into a puddle that's been spreading steadily, constantly for the last hundred years. No one has been down here for a long, long time. This place has been long since forgotten. The twisted metal and cracked stone sits, and waits, but for what, nobody knows. If somebody knew, then it would not be waiting.

If one ever did remember, if one did come the many thousands of metres below the surface and cast their eyes upon the ruins, perhaps they would see it. Perhaps they would see what has happened here. Perhaps they would see lives destroyed and remade in an instant, dreams built and crushed in moments. But most would miss it. Yes, most would miss it.

Most would miss this faint trail of prints, pressed into the mud on a determined quest for freedom. Most would miss this single decaying feather, lost of a bird in flight carrying one with broken wings. Most would miss the tale of love and loss told here, because they always have and they always will.

If one managed to follow the trail, intentionally or otherwise, they would hear another tale, though not the one that needs to be told. They would hear the tale of a man in love with an idea he could never realise, and of the woman who stood by him until the futility won out. They would hear the idealism fade into jadedness, would hear that it was no longer about the idea but of having something to show for it, and if it were the right person at the right time, they would know how sad the tale was.

But not sadder still than the tale left unspoken.

If one managed to follow the trail, intentionally or otherwise, they might hear the other tale. They would not understand it. But if they are quiet, and if they are still, they might hear the echo of a song sung long ago, a song that in its own way reflects the history that created it. The ghost of one believed to have no soul lives in this place, and if one managed to discern the faint voice from the whistling of the wind, the crackling of steady flame, or the settling of old steel, they would know where the mistake was made. There can be no ghost if there is no soul.

The ghost lives here in the song, and though the tale ends elsewhere, if one listens carefully and manages to continue to follow the trail, they will realise why. They will realise that the ghost is the remnant of a life lived in futility and in pain, and they will take heart in it. Even one trapped in a shell not of their own choosing, trapped in a life and a mindset and a desperation not of their own choosing, can be free. Once one realises that the cage is not truly locked, anyone can step out into the world, and they can be free.

Very few ever come down here. Very few ever see the pipe that's been dripping steadily, constantly for the last hundred years, into the puddle that's been spreading steadily, constantly for the last hundred years. No one has been down here for a long, long time. This place has been long since forgotten. But now that it has been found, and remembered, and the tales have been heard and understood, only one thing remains to be seen:

Will you be free?

**Author's note**

**Uh… I have no idea where this came from. But I shall explain it. If you don't care about how this relates to Portal, just read the first paragraph. If you'd like to see some more Portal psychology courtesy of Indy the Amateur Psychoanalyst, read the whole thing.**

**All of us are put in boxes. People tell us things that aren't true because people love control, and they love the gratification that comes from controlling other people. And don't say that's not you. It is. Everyone manipulates everyone every day. Manipulation is not always a bad thing. But it is ALWAYS there. So. I want you to take a look at your box. I know you have one. Look at your box, and look at the people who built it. And ask if you want to stay there. I know you like the inside of your box, because even though you don't like that people are telling you what to do and who you are, most of us are too afraid to leave the box because we find comfort in what we know, even if we don't like it. Yes, I'm talking about that thing where animals raised in cages return to their cages when released into the wild. People do it too. Some people don't know they're in boxes, and some people do and they need a reason to leave them, while others need to be kicked out (which doesn't work), and then there's the occasional person who returns to the box every now and again to remind themselves how much they don't like it. And ask yourself: will you be free?**

**I booted up Portal 2 (surprise, surprise, Indy booted Portal! Shocker!) to read Lab Rat (which of course is located ONLINE instead of I dunno IN THE GAME FILES WITH EVERYTHING ELSE) and I was looking at the menu screen. I'm on the part where you're in Old Aperture for the first time (and I usually stop playing there, because GLaDOS is gone and I get bored), so here's the screen for those who don't know: . And while you're on this screen, potatOS is singing 'PotatOS Lament'. I thought it sounded kind of like a ghost. And even if you don't really know what she's saying (which I do), it sounds overall like a lonely person has just lost something that they despaired of ever finding again. Just imagine for a second you're standing there in Old Aperture, and you hear that song. It's kind of a sad thought. And now that I've gotten the intro out of the way, the story means this:**

**Old Aperture is a place of abandoned dreams. It's where Cave started his vision, and over time, his vision (just like the facility itself) fell apart and became corrupted. When Chell falls in there, she leaves a trail that leads to the resolution of the vision. Someone came back to Old Aperture, and restored the dream. No one knows about it yet, but Aperture did something great for science, that being GLaDOS. GLaDOS was the bird with broken wings, because she has the potential to fly to faraway places (to do great things), but she's trapped inside of her own thinking and so she's broken her own wings. The scientists believed GLaDOS to be a machine that needed to be controlled (and I don't know why they didn't just ask her nicely to do stuff; it doesn't appear that they tried that), so they believed she had no soul. But she has to have a soul, or she wouldn't be alive in the way that she is (I don't actually know how souls work, so don't quote me on that). And so GLaDOS lived her life trapped in the box the scientists put her in (where the sum of her life was to run the facility and test, basically), but when she ends up in Old Aperture she sort of gets to see the world, and she begins to understand that she's been too afraid of what's outside the box to leave, even though the box is open and she can leave whenever she wants. I feel that she steps out of her box a little when she begins to raise the crows.**

**Some of the stuff about people not seeing the story of Old Aperture refers to the fact that, whether the developers put it there intentionally or not, there's a lot of stuff buried in Portal that most people don't see. And I know not everyone can think about Portal [GLaDOS] 24/7 like I can [have to], but I think that's kind of sad.**


End file.
